> given that Russia didn't lose any nuke in the chaotic 199x

Serious question (in more ways than one): do we really know that to be true? How?

Of course it's possible that some Russian nukes were stolen, and someone's been keeping them in a warehouse for the last 25 years, and we'd never know. But I find it likely that if someone had stolen a nuke, they would have sold it, and the kind of people that would buy it would have used it by now.

I'm making two assumptions:

1. you don't steal a nuke unless you're going to sell it or use it

2. you don't buy a nuke unless you're going to use it (for blackmail or to blow something up)

And (2) would have been easily noticed.

I think there's one other possibility. It could be stolen to study and reverse engineer. You're probably looking at state actors instead of random third parties, but enemies of Russia would probably want to see the level of technology they're using. And states trying to develop their own nukes might be able to learn a lot from having a first hand example.

I'd be quite surprised is someone who lost/had stolen and then recovered a nuc would admit to this taking place. I really don't think we would know if this had happened.

The US government spent a lot of money upgrading Russian nuclear security and paying personnel in the 90's so precisely this would not happen. Same with the rocket scientists.

I have heard that one of the recent projects to redefine the kilogram independently of an artefact was essentially a job creation scheme for unemployed Russian nuclear scientists to stop them being hired by people with more nefarious intentions.

Source? I'd be somewhat surprised if these job creation projects are happening much anymore given that a lot of the 90's era scientists will have retired or emigrated by now. I think most emigrated.

It might have been a while ago- here [0] is a link to a press release from 2005 saying that the isotopic enrichment of silicon-28 for the Avogadro Project (to redefine the kilogram using a perfect sphere of isotopically pure single-crystal silicon-28) was done at two Russian institutions.

Here [1] is a 2004 press release from the International Science and Technology Center, whose first objective is to "Provide weapons scientists in the CIS the opportunity to redirect their talents to peaceful activities." Page 9 describes their involvement in the Avogadro Project.

Here [2] is the project description on the ISTC website.

[0]https://www.ptb.de/cms/en/presseaktuelles/journals-magazines...

[1]https://www.istc.int/upload/files/6yoyjz8txt44oc0g8cs8.pdf

[2]https://istc.ru/istc/sc.nsf/html/projects.htm?open&id=2630